I helped play test and design this deck. Of the 119 cards in the final product I designed 9 cards. This deck is a wonderful addition to Agricola and is best served mixed in with the standard EIK decks.

My hat's off to the folks who put this deck together. Some excellent cards, many of which make actual "farming" easier than the base game set, and of course the whole thing integrates very nicely into any and all versions of the game. Essential for any serious player of the game.

I have played E-, I-, K- decks extensively, and have tried out CZ- and O-. The Gamers deck is head and shoulders above all the other decks as far as interesting and new things to do, and yet doesn't seem overpowered to me.

EASY BUY for any Agricola fan. The $10 is a very good deal for what this brings to the game.

There are quite a number of interesting cards which never appear within the base game. Stone is also more easily available in earlier stage for this deck.In addition there are more improvement which can be passed around between players which give all the opportunity to gain the benefits.

Some interesting cards here, and I like that many of them make some of the underpowered action spaces (like the fishing, plow 1 field, day laborer, travelling players, etc.) more usable. A word of warning, though. Many of the cards are geared toward bolstering farming and baking, which is a tough way to make food without special cards, but there are no plows in the Gamers' Deck and relatively few things that help you get grain. So, this really does have to be combined with some of the other decks to work.

After playing with the included E, I, and K decks for a while, we were excited to hear that there was going to be a new expansion deck, the Agricola: Gamers' Deck. My wife got it for me for Christmas and we eagerly tried it out. We found the deck to be nicely balanced that added a few new aspects to the game. We've played it with it quite a bit---in fact, it helped us to "rediscover" the base game of Agricola after playing with the big Agricola: Farmers of the Moor expansion for a while.

This is the first Agricola expansion I've enjoyed. It feels like the basic game, but just adds variety to a game that has started to get a bit stale. I think I do prefer the original cards slightly, but these make a nice change at times.

Just admit it already, Small World is not a fantasy wargame...it's a Mancala variant!

9

Oct 2012

You can't argue with a card expansion that has the benefit of hundreds of hours of playtesting by expert players from all over the world. It's probably a safe bet that the basic Agricola decks found in the original box didn't get this much playtesting before the game's full retail release.

The only misstep was changing the card backs, since by design these cards were meant for the level three rules that mix all the basic decks together. My group isn't really at a level where we try and guess each other's cards though, so for the most part it doesn't matter as much to us as it might to more competitive folks.

There is a more balanced feel to this deck as compared to the three base game decks. It makes better use of the less used action spaces such as Day Labourer and Fishing. It is also more flexible in that there are more ways to convert between various resources.